I’m on smoko

I’m taking my smoking break.

That’s impressive. I know a lot of games struggle to find a good balance between gameplay and simulation. But to heap historical accuracy and storytelling on top of that, and have it be a worthwhile experience, is a feat.

I’ve done this, and it really is. It’s peak goth but also peak positive socialization. All the community and dress of a nightclub, with all the camaraderie of being around other gamers, but all the drama is completely (okay, mostly) made up and you can hear everyone talk. I spent so many wonderful summer evenings this way.

LARP is great like that. You will meet people. You will make friends. You may even get a few girlfriends like GP did.

Vampire LARP rules emphasize role-play and soft-skills, where combat falls to rock-paper-scissors and usually lasts mere seconds. So, more streamlined than the already streamlined tabletop version. It’s zero fun if you break character, and a lot more fun if you lean into improv and ham it up. I’ve also done this with a team of storytellers hosting the event which really kept things moving along. It’s good fun all around.

Whoa. A Jumpman reference in the wild. Thank you for reminding me. But I have no idea what that string of characters means. :(

The sound of the player taking a tumble off the stage, followed by a death march, has been forever seared into my brain. Watching my uncle play this, helped little_warp_core understand the limitless potential of (home) video games, above and beyond the likes of crappy Asteroids and Pac-Man ports.

no questions asked

Yes.

Braid.

The game itself is brilliant. The story and message within is heartfelt, heartbreaking, and un-apologetically autobiographical. Up until that point, I knew gaming was a good storytelling medium, but not for something this moving.

There’s some interesting implications here. ICE is well documented as wearing body armor and carrying heavy weaponry. In a planned ambush or head-on attack, an opposing force might be inclined to show up with overwhelming odds and a lot more firepower. It’s classic escalation. It would almost certainly be a lethal firefight.

Now that I think about it, regular folks might be inclined to gang-up if they consider themselves under threat. If they’re not already.

They, on the other hand, see bad and good as something you are, a sort of fundamental birth stat that can never change.

Holy shit. Thank you for this. You have no idea how long I’ve been looking for a more succinct explanation for this whole mess.

When has he ever?

This is a complex topic. People here are nostalgic for family recipes, box mixes, and restaurant varieties. There’s no one single way to make this dish.

The basic components are just pasta and cheese sauce. It doesn’t need to be baked, but its done like that sometimes to make it easier to prepare, or caramelize the top a bit. Some add breadcrumbs to the top before baking, others add some mustard, paprika, or chili to the sauce. It’s also not uncommon to see people add hot sauce after serving, since this is usually kind of bland (fatty and starchy) comfort food.

The key is that everyone makes mac & cheese their own way. If you have a savory cheese sauce in the cuisine where you’re from, you could probably just use something like that. But I recommend trying this the american way first, just so you know how you want to customize it.

Simple: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/238691/simple-macaroni-and-cheese/

Complex: https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/old-fashioned-macaroni-and-cheese/#RecipeCard

With garlic: https://www.justataste.com/roasted-garlic-macaroni-and-cheese-recipe/

I’ve never done it, but the garlic version looks great! I checked a few other variations and the consensus is to roast a head of garlic and mash it into the cheese sauce.

For a while there, this phrase was on stickers that people could put on their plates (IIRC). At some point, the city council and DMV got involved and just printed the motto/complaint right on the plates.

Right: American cheese on top. That’s gotta be raw pasta underneath.

Left: “came away clean from the tray” in what I can only imagine is a congealed cheese+starch block.

These are terrible choices.

FWIW, I support the message on display here. Intolerance for intolerance, karma, and all that.

Things at the workplace get prickly, and not always for the right reasons.

In the case of depictions of violence, it’s deeper than the actions of the individual. Looking the other way only pulls management in, making them complicit. This opens the company up to a lawsuit, under some bullshit argument along the lines of “promoting a violent workplace” or some crap like that. Doesn’t matter if it can be argued down in court, a lot of places would probably settle just to keep it out of the news.

Also, lets say none of that comes to pass. It also opens the door for right-wingers to go their way with this stuff. I’m talking way more hardcore than Punisher skulls.

My god. The bets you could win with people.

“Okay, so I’m going to eat this - what was in it again? Durian, sardines, kimchee, and muenster cheese salad? Let’s add some onion for crunch and I’m in.”

learning a new DSL to install packages.

This is an understatement. It’s like a build system, package manager, and git repository were thrown in a blender. Those don’t need to be separate systems, but boy does it help pin down what’s going wrong.

Rant:

I noped right the fuck out after 60 minutes of trying to get nix to work as an isolated dev+build environment under Ubuntu. It probably works better under NixOS, but it’s documented for this use-case too. After things stopped lining up with the docs, I realized it was going to cost me more time than it it would save.

I have nothing against this or any kind of music in general, as a blanket rule.

However, when your neighbor decides to blast Tejano at 2AM and all you get is the oom-paa-oom-paa polka bassline through your wall, it’s easily a 0/10 forced-listening experience.

Radioactive.

It had a novel, ear-grabbing sound at the time, but got overplayed to the point where it now just grates on my nerves.

Also: most American wedding reception traditions like The Electric Slide and The Chicken Dance. Do better. I once went to a reception where everyone did The Time Warp and it was amazing.

Thank you for posting this obligatory gem of a training video.

Let’s take a moment and praise the original lineup of GWAR: a bunch of artists decided that Punk could be even more Punk if we just put a little more effort into stagecraft. Well, that and going to great lengths to not take one’s self seriously as serious business. As recent events illustrate, we’re all richer for it.

Edit: the subtext here is multi-layered. As people and performers, effigies in protest have a long standing tradition; it’s awesome to see. Also, as the scumdogs of the universe, GWAR is imprisoned here. It’s worth remembering that it’s GWAR lore that Earth is a backwater stain of a prison planet by galactic standards. Unfortunately, current affairs seem to back this up.